IPL Preview, MIvRCB: Mumbai Indians, Royal Challengers Bangalore In Search Of Victory

The Mumbai Indians are in familiar territory considering their history in the IPL with three losses from four matches as they run into a fired-up Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in their second home game of the season at the Wankhede Stadium on Monday.
With just the one victory coming against the Kolkata Knight Riders last Monday at the Wankhede followed by the humbling defeat against the Lucknow Super Giants away in Lucknow, the Hardik Pandya-led side would be under a fair bit of pressure to get the house back in order when they take on RCB.
The Mumbai Indians' undoing has been the continuing woes of their top order batters with openers Will Jacks and Ryan Rickelton failing in the previous game against LSG.
Star batter and icon player Rohit Sharma has been in wretched form in this season so far with just 21 runs from three games and missed the fourth match against LSG owing to a knee injury suffered in the nets.

The middle order has looked shaky and the only saving grace has been the solidity and flair of India T20I skipper Suryakumar Yadav, who struck a half-century against LSG albeit in a losing cause.
Suryakumar and Ryan Rickelton are the only two batters of the Mumbai Indians who have scored fifties in this season of the IPL so far.
Tilak Varma's patchy form has been worrisome for MI with him being controversially retired by head coach Mahela Jaywardene in the match against LSG after he was unable to up the ante when the going got tough.
Suryakumar has amassed 177 runs to his kitty this season and has been the mainstay as far as the Mumbai Indians are concerned but Naman Dhir's knock of 46 runs in the LSG match augurs well for MI.
With Rohit Sharma's availability for the match against RCB not confirmed yet, Mumbai Indians would hope for a much-improved batting performance from their stars.

Skipper Pandya did get a few big hits against LSG but the game was out of Mumbai's grasp at that time but he would look to emulate that effort against Rajat Patidar's RCB.
In the bowling department, Pandya would want himself and the rest of the bowlers to pull up their socks after receiving a bit of a stick against Lucknow.
The pace trio of Trent Boult, Deepak Chahar and Ashwani Kumar were all expensive with economy rates of 9.33, 11.50 and 13 respectively against LSG.
Ashwani, who had a dream debut against KKR, gave away 39 runs in three overs conceding four fours and two sixes as he was brought right back to reality after the heady night at Wankhede.
Meanwhile, RCB would look to bounce right back from the disappointing loss at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, where they lost to Gujarat Titans quite convincingly by eight wickets.

Skipper Rajat Patidar, Liam Livingstone have been among the runs in the three matches played so far with half-centuries.